The Corporate Service Corps (CSC) exposes high performance IBM employees to the 21st century context for doing business --- emerging markets, global teaming, diverse cultures, working outside the traditional office, and increased societal expectations for more responsible and sustainable business practices. CSC participants perform community-driven economic development projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, working at the intersection of business, technology and society.
Participants are from over 50 countries and have participated / will participate in team assignments in over 20 countries including Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, Ghana, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Romania, South Africa, Tanzania, Turkey, Kazakhstan, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Russia, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Cambodia, Poland, Thailand and Vietnam.
CSC projects range from assisting networks of entrepreneurs and small businesses trying to grow and reach export markets, designing strategic plans to drive local tourism, to the utilization of information technology by educational institutions and government agencies
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The CSC 5 Chile 1 team has 13 people (unfortunatly, Cyril Philip from India didn't manage to get his visa to join us in Chile). The 12 that were on site are Stephen Abbruzzese from Australia, Sid Goyal from New Zeland and working in Australia, Anjali B Martyris from India working in Dubai, Amit Sharma and from India, Jonas Survila from Lituania, Esther Arroyo
from Spain, Clara Coepijn and Lisette Marsman from Netherlands, Nitin Gaur and Jamika Whatley from the US, Marcus Csaky from Canada and Karim Aumjaud from France. Each of us coming with different cultures and having to fit in the Chilean one, in the working environment and while visiting the country.
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The assignement took place on May, 14th till June, 11th in Concepcion - Chile. Concepcion is the capital city of the VIII Region of Bio-Bio (region of the Mapuche). With approximatly 300 000 inhabitants, Concepcion is the second largest city in Chile, it was founded in 1550 by Pedro de Valdivia.
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Esther Arroyo and Karim Aumjaud has been assigned to the organization named JUNDEP. JUNDEP is a non-profit promoting equity, social development and citizen participation. Their main work encourages citizenship development in relationship to social housing.
Created more than 40 years ago, JUNDEP is recognized for their work in the social area, both in technical assistance for social housing, as well as in the provision of aid and intervention in vulnerable groups.
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JUNDEP, has made additional societal contributions through training and education, research, design, technical proposals, methodological support and implementation of projects in areas such as social architecture.
In the early years worked with projects in the most vulnerable populations, directed at housing repair. In 1985, after the March earthquake in the central region, staff work consisted of providing technical assistance tp the reconstruction work in the area near Santiago; especially in the repair of homes of "adobe" (mud, straw, earth).
JUNDEP works on technical assistance programs for families who fall under the first and second quintile of the national poverty line. The profile of the beneficiaries are people with high social vulnerability, no regular income, a low level of education and culture, large families and a strong need to solve their status in society in the shortest possible time.
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They participate in special programs for social housing, after catastrophes in various cities as well as with ethnic groups in very extreme climates and conditions. There are mainly three types of projects:
CSP : Construcion Sitio Propio - Construction of a property on a site owned by the familiy
CNT : Construcion Nuevo Terrenos – Property and land are delivered to the family
PPPF : Programa de Protecion del Patrimonio Familiar (reparación - reparation)
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Esther and Karim has been asked to assist JUNDEP in improving their project and portfolio management system to provide a single way of executing the projects in each branch of the organisation.
As the JUNDEP team members are not used to work on IT tools, the solution proposed had to be very simple to use and to maintain. Microsoft Excel spreadsheets has been chosen, first because it's a known tool, no training needed and second because the computers were already equiped with the tool (no additionnal invest would be needed).
Several spreadsheets has been developed, 4 of them directly related to the project and one model for the portfolio management to support the weekly management meeting on project follow-up.
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A great thanks to all the JUNDEP team who wery warmly welcomed the IBM team : Juan Guitierrez, Rodrigo Gonzalez, Ximena Merino Sainturat, the social worker team : Rodrigo Muñoz, Angela Bustos, Masiel Aspe Torres and the technical team : Soledad Henriquez, Victor Hugo Rojas, Hans Lindemann, Ivan Alejandro Hurtado, Antonio Arriagada and Sebastian our translator.
During the assignment period, several shakes related to earthquakes happened, espacialy a large one, of 6.4 magnitude, that happened on June 1st offshore Concepcion. A few days later the Puyehue volcano erupted generating a heavy ashen cloud moving to Argentina.
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